Beginners Match – Encounter and Annihilation
(Sorry for unpainted and therefore difficult to identify units in the pictures... work in progress. )

Buke vs. Otokodate
Sice we were 4 players and I only have two 200pt armies, we played 2vs.2 and commanded each one Army with 100 or 95 AP which I prepared in advance and we assigned at random. For all of us it was the first Kensei game and more or less the first Tabletop Wargame experience.

The Plans:
Otokodate was afraid of the Yumi-Samurais long range and the added power from the Buke Yumi Hero. Therefore the plan was from the beginning to try to rush forward and engage in melee as soon as possible, trying to keep the Ozutsu out of the Yumis line of sight and looking for opportunities to take shots at unengaged samurai.
Buke had the exactly opposite plan: They wanted to avoid melee as long as possible and begin bei whittling down the Otokodates units (preferably the Ozutsu, due to their firepower against Samurai) and then overpowering the weakened units in a grand charge.

Round 0 – Setup:
Starting with Units of 6 Yari Ashigaru on both sides in the middle, Otokodate started to expand their front to the right with its Katana Ashigaru, led by an Assassin. Buke put their Unit of Yari-Samurai + Hata-Jurushi + Duelist on the opposite side promtin Otokodate to counter with their second Yari-Ashigaru Unit (7 Ashigaru + Hata-Jurushi + Naginata-Heroe). Buke then put their Archers (with their Yumi-Hero) in front of the Otokodate Katana Ashigaru, whereafter they put their Ashigaru Ozutsu far on the left, since they were really afraid to lose their small regiment of ranged units to an Yumi-Samurai-Volley. To secure their Archers Buke then placed their Dai-Katana Samurai next zu them.

Round 1 – Where are they going?
Buke immediatly started by pulling their Ashigaru back. Otokodate let their Katana-Ashigaru run forward to a) reach the Archers fast and b) force Buke into some kind of action. However they continued to pull their Yari-Samurai back. The Otokodate Yari-Ashigaru followed the Katana-Ashigarus example and bravely marched forward.
Buke then opened fire on the running Katana-Ashigaru, but had little luck hitting anything, and sent their Dai-Katana Samurai forward to confront the approaching Ashigaru.
Seeing no way to get their Ozutsu into range, Otokodate decided to move their Generals Unit forward and slowly move the Ozutsu over to the other side to hopefully dismantle the Dai-Katanas.

Round 2 – A change in Tactics.
Since it was clear now, that Buke tried to focus on their Archers for the first rounds, Otokodate continued their advance in the middle and to the left, while Buke fired another volley onto the Katana-Ashigaru. After losing two Soldiers they where charged by the Dai-Katana, but managed to flee more towards the middle.
Since now the Ozutsu had an unexpected opening to fire on enemy troops, Buke realized they had to send more troops forward to take pressure of the Dai-Katanas. The Otokodate showed their superior firepower, killing one Samurai and wounding another.

Round 3 – First clashes.
To get out of the fire from the Buke Archers, Otokodate sent their Katana-Ashigaru into a Charge against the Dai-Katana. A fierce battle errupted showind that Samurai are the better warriors, as they only lost one, while killing three of the Ashigaru.
In the middle the two Ashigaru-Units finally faced each other, resulting in a slow and at first even fight.
The Buke General had now line of sight on the Ozutsu-Marksmen, ordering his archers to open fire. But due to the long range and obviously angry spirits no arrow found its target.
On the other side of the battlefield the Otokodate General marched his personal guard further forward, preparing to face the Buke Yari-Samurai. Lucky for him they marched in a wide bow to avoid being drawn into the (as they felt) pointless fight in the middle.
Seeing another chance opening up soon and trying to avoid further arrows, the Ozutsu Ashigaru moved back to the left flank.

Round 4 – Swarm tactics and superior firepower.
The fight in the middle started to slightly turn in favor of the Buke, while their Archers used the chance they got to fire upon the Otokodate General, hitting him personally with two arrows, wich he barely survived and killing two of his personal guard.
To divert the attention of the Buke leaders from the approaching fight on the left flank, Otokodate used their superior numbers, to swarm the remaining Dai-Katana on the right flank. Unable to reach the Otokodate general with their single charge, while he moved out of the way, the buke Yari Samurai were left open facing the Ozutsu, which in turn cost them one soldier, while the Duelst leading them got wounded.
Trying to push their slight advantage in the middle the Buke Ashigaru attacked, but bolstered by the presence of their leader, the Otokodate managed to face off the attack, sending the Buke running.
The surrounded Dai-Katana tried to fight off the enemy, being almost able to kill their Assassin, if it weren't for a heroic sacrifice of one of is subordinates, while losing two of their own. The last remaining Samurai found the honour to stay and fight to his death.

Round 5 – Heroic gestures.
The fleeing Buke Ashigaru scattered into all four winds, showing their true colours.
On the right flank the five Ozutsu soldiers tried to finish the last Samurai, but by some miracle were unable to, while he, already bleeding and exhausted, killed one of their own. Shocked by this display of strength, they turned tail and rand toward their General. Letting go a terrifying roar, the Samurai ran after them, and with his last breath cut another one of them down. The remaining three were then subject to another volley of Buke Arrows, killing the Ozutsu Assassin.
On the left flank the Ozutsu General noticed their advantage and – trying to avoid unnecessary risk to his life – moved away from the approaching Yari-Samurai. Thereby the Ozutsu were able to open fire once more on the helpless Buke, killing another one.
Seeing their last remaining Troops in the front unable to reach combat, and being open to attack himself, the Buke General accepted defeat and left the battlefield in dishonour... for now.

Otokodate with 7 victory points won against Buke with 3.

In the end it was actually pretty close, Otokodate lost 75 AP, Buke lost 80 AP (+10 fled the battlefield), but losing two whole units really broke their neck in regards to victory points.

I personally had a lot of fun, though at the beginning I felt like it would turn really stupid when Buke started by... moving away from us? Also the two Buke players started bickering about where to move (one wanted to move their Yari-Samurai over to the other side, the other didn't want them to block line of sight for the Yumi-Samurai...) and were quite reluctant to engage us for weird reasons (didn't want to charge with the Dai-Katana, because... they don't get their +1d6 combat roll vs Katana when charging...) and towards the end they grew quite frustrated because they felt like, I don't know, the game was against them?
We Otokodate players on the other side had quite a lot of fun working together to find lines of fire for the Ozutsu while keeping them out of sight of the enemy Yumis and thinking about Turn orders and who moves where and when does who attack whom etc.
In retrospect I regret not just engaging the Yari-Samurai on the left, but I thought all the time they had 2 Wounds like the Dai-Katana and saw no chance to win against them (and feared losing my General to their Duelist in a Honour Duel...)... ah, well.

Best wishes,
Cara

Last edited by Cara on Tue Aug 28, 2018 8:12 am, edited 1 time in total.

Really nice battle report! thanks!
No worries about unpainted miniatures! I prefer to see grey miniatures moving around than not seeing anything

Definitely your opponent was not the best general. Moving backward is not a good idea in battle. Actually, I have done that a couple of times when playing, mainly with cavalry trying to move from the flank to the center and make my opponent get confuse, but it overcomes only in the cavalry becoming useless for the rest of the battle.

Definitely, firearms must advance the first turn in order to reach mid-range. The modifier apply to long distance is very severe trying to simulate how powder was less effective than archers in long shot. But if you are able to move near the enemy, they will have a bunch of black-powder-problems.

I hope you really have fun and the army box give you a good battle as we spoke. I really enjoyed this battle report.

First game is always the toughest trying to get rules fixed in your mind and learning the styles of the troops. 2v2 might have been a bit heavy as a starter for some of the others. Maybe try smaller actions with 1 samurai unit a leader 2 ashigaru type units to learn the system if they had a bad time with a full sized game.

Hey, thanks @ajmendoza . I agree, moving back is a bad idea. With "only" 5 rounds, moving back 1 round means you have to move forward another round just to stand where you started... and your unit basically did nothing for 2 rounds.

Definitely, firearms must advance the first turn in order to reach mid-range. The modifier apply to long distance is very severe trying to simulate how powder was less effective than archers in long shot. But if you are able to move near the enemy, they will have a bunch of black-powder-problems.

I don't quite follow... the Ozutsu have range of 40cm, so they can't fire at long range at all, while yumi get -1d6 on their shoot roll on long range, right? Ozutsu get -1d6 on mid range, and +1d6 on short range (because of Shrapnel (PA))... or did we do it wrong?

First game is always the toughest trying to get rules fixed in your mind and learning the styles of the troops. 2v2 might have been a bit heavy as a starter for some of the others. Maybe try smaller actions with 1 samurai unit a leader 2 ashigaru type units to learn the system if they had a bad time with a full sized game.

Yeah, my Idea was that everyone just had 2 units + 1 Leader to focus on... and that we would learn "while playing" and also just accept that we will make mistakes/not know everything. But the Buke players turned really competitive and wanted to know everything in great detail (later i'll post a couple questions that arose...). We spent for example at one point about 30 minutes trying to figure out if the Buke archers could fire upon a unit and discussing whether the pose of models is taken into account when determining if they block line of sight...

When I try to win someone over to Kensei next time, I'll probably just use two 150pt Armies. 3 Units + 1 Leader for each side or something like that.

I don't quite follow... the Ozutsu have range of 40cm, so they can't fire at long range at all, while yumi get -1d6 on their shoot roll on long range, right? Ozutsu get -1d6 on mid range, and +1d6 on short range (because of Shrapnel (PA))... or did we do it wrong?

Noo, you did it perfectly. Ozutsu has no penalty for long-distance because it cannot shot long distance. I mean that firearms in general must step forward (mid range to reach the enemy and long-range weapons due the moddifies).